While You Still Can
by Lear's Daughter
Summary: AU: What if Kara had admitted her role in Zak's death much earlier than she did in the show? How would this change her relationships with Lee and Adama and their relationship with each other? What would this mean for the fate of the fleet?


Disclaimer: I own nothing to do with Battlestar Galactica

Commander William Adama stared at the casket that held the charred remains of his younger son. His spine was rigid, his expression somber. The day was cold, threatening rain. He could feel Kara Thrace's infinitesimal shivers as she stood at his side. Like him, she took refuge in the military formalities that told them to stand with their arms and legs just so, their backs straight, their chin at just the right angle as someone they loved was lowered into the cold ground forever.

The sharp retort of the guns split the quiet morning and Kara flinched. He took her hand in his, forsaking formality for the comfort they both so desperately needed. His other son, Lee, watched from across the casket, simultaneously comforting his mother and glaring daggers at his father. Lee blamed Adama for Zak's death, and perhaps, Adama conceded privately, perhaps he was right to do so.

After the funeral Adama accepted the condolences of his fellow officers and longtime friends of the family. Kara hovered next to him as though uncertain what to do, where to go. She looked about as exhausted as he felt.

"Let's get a drink," he murmured, laying a comforting hand on her shoulder. She smiled gratefully, the first he'd seen from her.

"Dad." At Lee's voice Adama felt his spine stiffen. He had never thought that it was possible to fit such accusation, such disdain into a single word. Not for the first time he felt grateful for Kara's presence beside him as they turned, in sync, to face the young man. "I want to talk to you."

He could tell by his son's voice, his stance, his expression, that it would not be a pleasant talk. Were he a lesser man Adama might have turned away rather than subject himself to the experience of another such talk with his son. But Adama was an experienced viper pilot, a man who was accustomed to staring into the face of the most deadly enemy mankind had ever encountered without flinching. So he stood a little straighter, lifted his chin a little higher, and braced himself for impact.

"Lee," Kara said as if to warn him away, but he was unstoppable.

"It's your fault Zak is dead," Lee told Adama, his eyes burning with righteous anger. "You're the one who pushed him into that cockpit. You're the one who told him he wasn't a man unless he earned his wings. Are you happy now, dad? Are you?"

Adama tasted bile at his son's words even as he forced himself not to visibly react.

"Lee," Kara said again, a little more urgently.

"Would you still have done it, if you'd known this would happen?" Lee demanded venomously, his chiseled face contorting into something ugly. "I bet you would have. Had to have the perfect sons, didn't you? Had to prove how much of a man you were by molding us in your image. Well, nice job, _Commander_. Really well done."

"Lee," Kara said a final time. "It wasn't his fault."

"Oh yeah?" Lee snarled, looking at her for the first time. "Whose fault is it then, Kara? Whose fault is it that my little brother is rotting in that grave?"

There was a moment of silence; a muscle leapt in Kara's jaw.

"It was my fault," she said quietly.

Lee blinked; Adama did the same. "It wasn't your fault, Kara," Lee said, half a second before Adama would have said the same thing.

Kara mumbled something Adama couldn't catch.

"What?" Lee said with a frown.

"I said," she said more loudly, "Zak failed basic flight."

"He passed," Adama said, taking an unconscious step away from her.

"No," Kara said, not meeting either man's eyes. "He had no feel for flying. He busted three maneuvers on his flight test. But I passed him."

Adama stood very, very still. His eyes fell to her hands, which were nervously wringing together, and the band on her thumb—a man's engagement ring.

"You did it because you were engaged," he heard himself whisper.

The shine of unshed tears in her eyes. "I was so in love with him," she croaked. "I didn't want to be the one to break his heart."

"Kara," Lee whispered, the betrayal in his voice palpable. For the first time it occurred to Adama that his living son was more than a little in love with Kara Thrace.

"I'm so sorry," she said brokenly. "If I could…If I could change what I did—"

"Get out of here," Adama interrupted, suddenly finding his strength again as a surge of fury soared through his veins.

"Sir," she whispered, a token protest.

"Get out of here," he repeated, taking a menacing step towards her, hands clenching into tight fists that wanted nothing more than to destroy her deceitful face. "While you still can."

She stared at him a moment longer, then whirled and stumbled away, her head bowed, her hands over her head as if to shield herself.

Adama felt Lee come to stand beside him, both of them deliberately not watching as she staggered away.

"I could use a drink," Adama said quietly. It was an olive branch. It was a plea for forgiveness.

"That…sounds good," Lee said after a pause, his voice still heavy with shock.

It was as Adama uncapped his sixth beer—or was it his fifth? Maybe his seventh—that he realized what a favor Kara had done for him. Nothing he could think of would have earned him Lee's near-absolute forgiveness like her honest confession had. It was possible, he knew, that Lee would return to hating him for all his failings as a father—and he really had been awful at times, he could admit—but for now Lee's acceptance, his willingness to share his grief instead of wielding it like a deadly weapon, was a balm on his soul.

It wasn't that he forgave Kara for what she had done, he thought muzzily, staring into the amber liquid and examining the distorted reflection that squinted back at him. He just didn't think his absolute hatred and disgust at what she had done necessarily precluded a certain admiration for her totally voluntary admission of guilt.

It was this thought that propelled him to contact his XO and best friend, Saul Tigh, to get the man to hunt down Lieutenant Thrace's address. It was this thought which then led him to take a cab—leaving Lee in a drunken stupor at the seedy bar—to Kara's rundown apartment building in a rundown neighborhood of one of Picon's more rundown cities.

In fact, it was not until after he had knocked at her door that he began to wonder why exactly he had come to see her.

She did not respond to his first knock, so he knocked again. When there was still no reply, he said, "Kara, this is Bill Adama. Answer the door."

Another long hesitation, and then the sound of reluctant footsteps coming toward the door. She opened it slowly, peering out at him, her face strangely waifish for such a strong young woman. She looked tired. Sober. Very pale. Tearstains decorated her cheeks. She held a gun loosely in her right hand, dangling at her side.

He pretended not to notice the weapon. "May I come in?" he asked, his gravelly voice somewhat more precise than usual.

She blinked for a moment as if confused, then wordlessly stepped back and allowed him entrance.

The apartment was very…Kara. A chaotic swirl of art and strewn possessions clearly marked it as her territory. This was not an abode she had ever lived in with another person, not even Zak.

Kara sat on her ratty couch, still holding the gun in her lap as though unsure what to do with it. A bottle of fine whiskey sat, half empty, on the coffee table in front of her.

"I'm not going to have you court-martialed," Adama said, because in the long wait for her to answer the door he had decided that that was what he had come to tell her.

"I deserve it," Kara said morosely, staring down at her gun.

"Maybe," he conceded. His thoughts seemed to be collecting themselves nicely the more he spoke. "Whatever you did, though, I know one thing. Zak loved you. His letters made that clear. He wouldn't have wanted me to punish you."

"Okay," she replied, quietly, like a child, accepting what he was saying and accepting that he was saying it only out of a sense of duty. "Is that all?"

He almost said that it was. Then she looked up and they made eye contact and he had affirmed for him what he already knew.

There was a very small, very guilty part of Adama that saw the bleak expression in her eyes, the expensive bottle of alcohol, and the loaded weapon and was pleased. He hated himself for that part even as he couldn't entirely suppress it.

He knew that if he left now, no one would hold him accountable. He could go back and collect Lee and maybe he wouldn't even have to read the account of her suicide in the papers; maybe a single, family-less viper pilot would not merit a newspaper article. And Kara would be quietly tucked away—another empty corpse in the ground, a file in someone's drawer.

He made his choice.

"Zak would not want you to do anything drastic," Adama said quietly, feeling suddenly as sober as if he hadn't had a drink all evening. "He would not want you to hurt yourself."

The expression she shot him was almost betrayed. It said, I was going to die and you were going to let me. What changed?

"I deserve it," she told him. "It's my fault Zak died. I'm a cancer."

There were parts of what she said that Adama still did not feel that he could discuss rationally, without making her feel even worse. She did deserve it. It was her fault that Zak was dead.

"Say what you will about your actions, but do not insult my son as you just did," he said sternly.

She frowned. "Sir?"

"Zak was a fine man," Adama reminded her. "Intelligent, witty. Kind. He always used to date firecrackers like his mother. He had very good taste in women. Say what you like about yourself, but do not imply that my son could ever have fallen in love with a woman who was cancerous."

"You don't understand!" she said brokenly. "Zak—he made me a better person. Just being around him reminded me of why it was good to be alive. But now he's gone, because _I_ wasn't satisfied with letting him be who he was—_I _was the one who chose to pass him, who pretended that he wouldn't be enough for me unless he got his wings."

"That's not what you said before," Adama pointed out. "At the cemetery, you said that you passed him because you didn't want to break his heart."

"I didn't!" she said. "It would have broken him to have failed. He was so committed, so determined to pass. And because I didn't want him to look at me and forever see the woman who had kept him from his dream, I passed him, and he died."

"It sounds like you did what you did out of love," he said, though the words threatened to stick in his throat. They were still talking about the needless death of his son, after all.

Kara just laughed bitterly. "Love," she said, pouring herself another shot of whiskey. "What a joke." She tossed it back like a pro, the muscles in her throat working as she swallowed. She set the glass down on the table, then met his eyes with a thoughtful frown. She straightened subconsciously as though in her head she had suddenly shifted from thinking of him as "Zak's father" to "Commander Adama." "You're Zak's father, sir," she said. "If anyone has the right to decide what happens to me for what I did, it's you." Her eyes drifted back to the gun; it was clear the choice she preferred. "You can just walk out that door, sir. No one will ever know." It was almost as though she were egging him on, except there was no amusement in her eyes, only a desperate longing.

"Kara, if I were going to walk out that door I would have done it ten minutes ago," he said. He hesitated. "You're willing to leave your punishment up to me?" he asked carefully. She nodded silently. "And do precisely what I say?" he pressed. She nodded again. He nodded himself and took a step closer to her, looking down as she bowed her head like a penitent. "Then here is your punishment," he said. "I want you to live, Kara. I want you to live a long and full life, because I believe that that is what Zak would have wanted for you. Will you do that for me? For Zak?"

She looked down again at the gun in her hands. Then she ever so deliberately placed it on the table. "I'll try," she promised quietly. "I'm not sure I'll succeed," she warned him. "But I'll try."

He nodded gravely. "That's all I ask." He paused, searching for something else to say. "I don't think we will see each other again, Kara Thrace," he said. Not if he could help it, at least. Despite what he had just asked her to do it was painful just being in her presence. I wish it had been you, he thought but did not say. "Take care of yourself."

"Goodbye, sir," she said, standing unsteadily.

His last image of Kara Thrace was of her standing, lost and uncertain, behind a coffee table that held a bottle of whiskey and a loaded gun. Then the door shut softly behind him.


End file.
